There are very few things in politics that can be said with certainty or even near-certainty, but here’s one that I’m close to 100% sure about: there’s a whole host of staffers in the White House praying that California doesn’t legalize pot this Fall.

If you haven’t been following, the odds of legal pot next year on the west coast are about even money. There’s both a bill in the Assembly and, more importantly,  a referendum on the November ballot that is polling above 50% right now. And we’re not talking Massachusetts-style decriminalization, or even Amsterdam-style psuedo-legalization. We’re talking totally legal, commercial production, distribution, sale, and consumption. Five points:

(1) Legalization in California will completely rearrange the national marijuana market: Here’s an excellent RAND analysis that focuses on the potential impact on the price of pot and the potential tax revenue implications, and also gives a nice overview of the potential laws. The Assembly bill would legalize consumption of pot statewide, set up regulations for commercial production and wholesale distribution, and levy a $50 tax on every ounce. The ballot initiative would legalize consumption and personal production of pot statewide, but allow individual counties to regulate/ban commercial production, in a pseudo dry-county style arrangement. In either case, RAND thinks the wholesale price of pot would drop in California from about $400 per  pound to about $38 per  pound (before the tax), and California would raise somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.4 billion in tax revenue.

(2) The federal laws are going to be tougher to enforce: On the policy side, the state-level marijuana laws are crumbling around the country at an increasing pace, to the point where it’s almost impossible to imagine pot still being illegal 20 years from now. But Congress has made no moves at all with respect to the federal laws. And those two things are increasingly coming into conflict: with medical marijuana legal in 14 states, state police are no longer available for cut-and-dry assistance to federal law enforcement.

In Gonzalez v. Raich, the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that  Congress’s commerce-clause power does indeed allow it to enact a federal ban and criminal punishments for home-grown, personal-consumption pot, even if state law allows it. But like the Fugitive Slave Act in the 19th century, the Court has been clear that the feds cannot compel the states to enforce federal law; if Congress wants the federal pot laws upheld in places without state or local bans, they will have to send federal agents there to do the enforcement. That’s a recipe for anti-big-brotherism, even in generally liberal places like California.

Recognizing the obvious tension and practical impossibility of the federal government taking over  personal possession busts formerly done by local officials,  the Obama administration announced last year that the Justice Department will not seek arrests for possession or distribution of medical marijuana if the potential offenders are following state laws.  That’s a great compromise  policy. And it will work quite well so long as state marijuana laws continue only to legalize medical marijuana and personal cultivation, while maintaining bans on recreational use and commercial production. The problems are going to start when the state bans on general production start to fall. Which is where California is heading.

(3) The Obama administration might be in a no-win situation: Let’s assume that the ballot initiative passes in California in November, and that at least one county (Humbolt, anyone?) adopts incredibly loose production and distribution regulations. How does the Obama Administration respond?

As best as I can tell, there would be no way for the administration to continue the current policy of not enforcing federal law in cases where it conflicts with state law. That’s fine now, but if left in place after legalization it would  presumably  lead to corporations (think Philip Morris) buying up thousands of acres in Humbolt and grow endless fields of pot to be sold in California, and presumably easily smuggled into other states at a massively discounted price and as a direct mockery of federal policy and power.  So the feds are seemingly going to have to stop interstate corporations from entering the California pot market. That’s not too hard to do. You just tell them that if they enter the market, they’ll be prosecuted.

But it’s not obvious where you draw the line. Consider an exclusively Californian corporation, like an existing marijuana dispensary, which is not being prosecuted under the current policy. What do you do if they start selling to anyone and expanding their grow business, in accordance with California law? Do you shut them down? That would seem to be a return to the old federal policy, since you’d be shutting down both their general sales and the formerly-tacitly-ok medical marijuana sales. Do you try to differentiate between compliance with the new California law (bad) and the old medical-only law (g00d, but no longer even on the books)? That seems like an impossible game for the feds.

So the only administrative option is to set some new line between complete non-enforcement and a return to the draconian enforcement that would roiling so much controversy up until last year. But since that line will have to exist somewhere short of where state law will necessarily be, it will create the same conflicts that led to the administration policy change last fall. This is what in politics is known as “a tough call.”

There are other options. Obama could go to Congress (or Congress could act on its own) and try to get a incentive-style appropriations law enacted, something like the Minimum Drinking Age Act that began withholding highway funds from states that did not raise their drinking age to 21 in the mid 80’s. Maybe that would compel California to do a 180 and re-criminalize pot. Or maybe it would just trigger a counter-productive (from the fed point of view) public outburst. Or worse,  a court case that dealt a significant blow to federal authority. The Drinking Age Act only survived Supreme Court challenge 7-2, on a court less hostile to federal power. Who knows.

(4) California politicians may suddenly become potheads: It will also be interesting to see how the California elected officials react to the referendum. If it passes overwhelmingly (say 60% of the vote), it’s hard to imagine the California delegation in Congress going along with a punitive punishment law trying to compel the state back into line. And that’s almost 1/8 of the whole Congress.

And forget it with the state politicians. While a close vote could produce a variety of reactions, a landslide will have the Assembly members tripping over themselves to brandish their pot-credentials. A popular program that raises significant tax revenue is not something you turn against. So you won’t get a lot of support for federal intervention from them. In fact,  you’re probably more likely to see members of the state assembly smoking a joint in Sacramento and flipping the bird at Washington. “Marijuana today, Marijuana tomorrow, Marijuana forever!”

And this might be is the main political danger for the Obama adminsitration. Pot laws across the country are in flux right now, and it’s pretty clear that, on the current trajectory, they are going to crumble nationwide within a generation. Those most in favor of the bans are senior citizens, and they are being replaced daily by newly-minted 18-year olds, who are largely in favor of legalization. But those seniors vote, and they are already skeptical of the Obama administration, for reasons ranging from the ridiculous (black Muslim foreign President!) to the eminently reasonable (hostility to health care changes that might reduce Medicare benefits). Pot could very easily be the last straw. And so it’s hard to imagine the Obama administration getting out in front of this.  Repeal the federal pot ban? Not a platform plank you’re likely to see in 2012.

(5) There are significant federalism consequences on the line: For all the talk about the congressional elections this fall, this is the issue that interests me the most. Not because I care about the pot laws — although as a moderate libertarian I would certainly be happy to see them gone — but because I sense this is going to be a major front in the development of American federalism. There’s a growing anti-Washington sentiment in the country, and for all its excesses and nonsense this seems to me to be one place that it could be positively channeled. Is there anyone left under the age of 40 who really thinks enforcing the pot laws is a good use of federal money?

And after a long stretch of significant losses for libertarianism in general (I don’t think there’s been a major libertarian victory in America since the draft was abolished and the all-volunteer army was instituted), this could reignite the twin ideas that some things are still in the province of individual liberty and, short of that, things that people want in one state might differ greatly from things that people want in another state. I certainly don’t see an individual Constitutional right to get baked, and I don’t see it as inherently sound policy  for such an individual privilege to trump the democratic will of, say, the people of Utah assembled in state government. But I also see no reason for the feds to get in the way of the democratic will of the people of California, if they want to allow adults to get high in their living rooms.

An overreaction by the feds, combined with current feelings around the country, could create significant sympathy for a renewed states’ rights ideology, both in popular attitudes and perhaps in the courts.  The last thing the administration (or anyone looking to strengthen federal power) needs is an Elian Gonzalez moment, where an ATF agent with a machine gun is photographed pointing it at a California twenty-something smoking a joint in his house. That would be a disaster. But it’s also one possible consequnece of trying to enfoerce the federal ban without any state help.